"Take my eye," Sasuke had said.
Those spinning kaleidoscope eyes would never spin again.
She had accepted.
(TIME-TRAVEL/THE LAST SEMI-COMPLACENT/SAKURA-CENTRIC)
Three years, Sakura believes, is enough time to indite herself out from the memories of...
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Prologue: Chapter 2
"The Argument of the Century"
Sakura was in a fūton.
The cotton fabric drew flat as she shifted her arms, deflating under her weight and padding again into size as she moved further.
Comfort.
Which was a thing she ...wasn't expecting?
Last time she had been awake, at least to the best of her knowledge, she had slammed straight into the ground at light-speed-oh-my-kami-miles per hour and she had probably broken her nose in two falling face-first onto whatever terrain she was lucky and (apparently) merciful enough to pass out on.
But this was just too perfect- her hand instinctively reached for the bridge of her nose, to find not even a fracture in the cartilage underneath.
And even more funnily, the amount of chakra she possessed didn't appear too far drained from th exhilaratinging maddness that the helpful absorption of some old dead space incarnate's power had on herself.
Rather than feeling too full, she found herself feeling inbound- just like the blanket resting on her body, as she uncomfortably resigned from her fetal slumber. The power, whether it was the fault of some measure of paradoxical undressing syndrome or the incredible convenience of that left eye of hers, felt numb and insignificant.
She could only really tell she still had some, some of it left- in the fact that despite the numbness and the cloudy pillowing of the fūton, she did feel a third nature of chakra that fluctuated around her body in indiscreet amounts. She had gotten used to the remnants of Sasuke's chakra... the bits and pieces of every patient she had treated with medical ninjutsu, slowly fading, but there was a bigger presence there.
It was nothing like she had felt before. Unless it was some undisclosed, secretive medic-nin who treated her in her sleep and brought her to this sanctuary (it definitely was just a tent, and by the smell of it, she was in a damp cave or something equally squicky and moist.)
Carefully, with light steps, Sakura made her exit. Outside was what seemed to be the entire population of Konoha- and more.
Like the entire Fire Country had been gathered into a single room.
People as far as the eyes can see, and literally. Chakra signatures made a flaming hot white bunch throughout the colder upper-crust, the ceiling of the cavern. A few more rested atop gentle hills of stalactiting soil, and fewer still unseen to the bare eye above the walls themselves.
Puddles of water were forming on lowering slopes on the cave floor. The air was bearably humid. This.. was she still in Konoha? Caves of this size only existed in the unindustrialized countryside (they were pretty much the reason why the whole area was uninhabited, too, but she wasn't going to get in-depth with the cultural technicality now).
